Magic or Madness - Book Review

Magic or Madness is a YA novel by Justine Larbalestier, telling the story of fifteen-year-old Reason Cansino. Reason has been brought up by her mother, Sarafina, moving constantly across Australia in order to elude Reason’s grandmother Esmeralda, who has claimed custody of her. Sarafina has told Reason that Esmeralda performs all kinds of terrible rituals in the name of magic. When Sarafina is taken to hospital, Reason is sent to live with Esmeralda. Reason begins to explore the house, hoping to learn the truth about Esmeralda. However, when she steps through the mysterious back door and into New York, she is forced to wonder if magic might be real after all.

This is a clever book, with more layers to it than I first expected. After the first few chapters I was sure that Sarafina was completely nuts, and that Reason would have to slowly come to terms with the fact that Esmeralda is not the monster Sarafina made her out to be. Sure enough, Sarafina is taken to a hospital for the mentally ill, and Reason finds that Esmeralda’s house is not as Sarafina described it. Esmeralda herself seems completely normal. Then, slowly, a more sinister picture begins to emerge. There really are weird ritual objects hidden around the house. There really is the corpse of Sarafina’s pet cat in the cellar, with its neck slashed. The boy who lives next door seems to believe magic is real and that Reason can use it too. And then Reason steps through the back door into another country and suddenly everything changes.